The present invention relates to trains for renewal and construction of railroad tracks.
Railroad track renewal trains of this type are disclosed in French Pat. No. 1,303,502 and Swiss Pat. No. 511,332.
The trains so described, are adapted, after the deposit of new rails outside of old track, to lift and spread the old rails, to remove the old ties one by one, to regulate the surface of the ballast bed, to lay new ties one by one, to draw in the new rails and to position them on the new ties at the new gauge while continuously travelling forward on the old track.
To this effect, these renewal trains comprise a formation of supply cars attached to a so-called substitute or replacement car in the form of a straight beam resting by its ends on two rolling means, such as bogies, one of which is adapted to roll on the old track to be renewed and the other on the new track which has been renewed and comprising, mounted in tandem between the said rolling means, a device for removing the rails of the old track, a means for discarding the old ties, a means for regulating the ballast, a means for laying new ties and a means for closing new rails previously laid on either side of the track.
These trains are satisfactory for the renewal of railroad tracks, i.e. for the replacement of old material on an old track by new material, but these trains cannot be used for the construction of a railroad track of the kind where merely a surface of ballast is provided, whereon a track substitute or replacement car cannot be supported.
This is the reason why, for the construction of new track, reliance has generally been placed on systems consisting of transporting gantries for preassembled panels, rolling on auxiliary rails resting on the surface of the new track or on construction trains consisting of preassembled track panels attached to a laying car consisting of a beam projecting forward allowing the laying of preassembled panels on which the train advances afterward as the panels are laid.
An object of this invention is to allow, either the construction of, or the renewal of, railroad tracks using a single train as described above by means of which the new ties are laid one by one in a continuous forward travel.